Sunday, March 20, 2005

362: HIV

So here we have evolutionary trees and natural selection at the very core of a vitally important area of medical research. Yet we are told again and again by op-ed columnists and certain members of boards of education that evolution is nothing but an evil religion and that creationism of one flavor or another is the future of science. You'd expect then that Intelligent Design or some other form of creationism would help reveal something new about this HIV. But it has not. That should count for something.

In a case we've covered before, the first full phylogenetic analysis of the virulent HIV strain from New York reveals a roadmap to future research. Evolutionary hypotheses provide testable hypotheses.